Tag Archives: women

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Four More Years


While last night’s Democratic Convention was inspiring, we still have a lot of work to do. Work to get folks registered and remind them to vote. As we women know, 92 years ago we fought long and hard to earn the vote. It is a responsibility as an American citizen to vote. If you don’t vote, don’t even begin to complain about anything.

There are many issues at stake during this election. Yes, we want four more years, but not everyone does. We do need more jobs, we need to realize that this president inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression. He saved the auto industry and a lot of that money has been paid back by Detroit.

Now every women can get health insurance. Being a woman is not a pre-existing condition. Life time caps are gone and children born with serious chronic diseases will be able to receive that treatment they so desperately need.

We must remember that the Republicans took the checks and balances off of Wall Street and drove us right off of the cliff. Thanks by the way, it was so fun for average American families.

There is a spirit of sexism and racism pervading our culture that is getting worse. Hate crimes and violence are on the rise. Guns are not an answer.
These next two months are going to be very critical for our country. Instead of reality tv, let’s participate in American reality. An election that will make it or break it for the middle class and poor, for women, and for those with health issues. This election will effect someone you know or perhaps even love.

 

Don’t sit on the couch and be angry, get up and out and make a difference

Our President Barak Obama

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What Women Want


This is a subject that has inspired books and movies. It is now a huge part of our 2012 Presidential election. Now, be assured that not all women want more rights. Some are happy and content being “owned” by the significant male in their life. But for those of us who are strong. capable and passionate, we want change. We don’t want to go back to the nineteenth century and we want to move forward.

Women want to be legally equal in 2013. We are the only citizens of the United States of America who are not equal legally. We want the government and men out of our bodies. We are capable of making choices that effect our reproduction and our health.

We want people to understand that rape is not legitimate. It has nothing to do with sex. It is completely about power and control. I cite the cases of eighty-five year old women and one year old babies being raped.

We want stronger laws protecting women and men from Domestic Violence. I worked in Domestic Violence in two states for over 25 years. A women does not have to live in fear. No one has the right to verbally abuse you. No one has the right to hit, slap, punch, kick, break your jaw, threaten your life or the lives of your children. There are shelters and helplines in almost every town and in every state. Call your local police for telephone numbers to receive shelter, food, counseling, legal assistance, moral support and caring attention.
At the shelter I helped to start we had a slogan, “You can’t beat a Woman.”

We want equal pay for equal work. Women who are doing the same job as a man are currently earning $.77 for every dollar a man earns. In the 1970’s, it was $.64 for every dollar a man earned. Yes, it is an improvement but a pathetic one.

Women want the world to know that women’s work counts. If a woman chooses to stay at home with her children she is just as worthy as a woman who goes out of the home to work. And if we go out to work, our work is as meaningful as a man’s work.

Women do not want to be viewed as second class citizens. We don’t want how we look, what size we wear, or how much plastic surgery we’ve had to matter more than our character, morals and intelligence.

We want the women in every country of the world to be free from honor killings, being sold into sexual slavery, from genital mutilation. We want every child, boy or girl in the world to be able to learn to read and write and to receive the medical care they require.

We want American insurance companies not to put caps on the health costs of human beings. We want every man, women, and child to receive the medical care and medication they need, even if they aren’t in the 1%. We want insurance companies to be forced not to tell doctors what medications they can prescribe and what treatments they can order.

We want the bullying that children are suffering at the hands of classmates to end. We want schools to be free of violence and hatred. Every time a child commits suicide due to bullying, we as a society, have failed them. Our hands are also bloody.

We want people to be able to love whomever they love. Love comes from the soul and souls don’t have gender. Souls just love and that love is no less beautiful than any other.

Please feel free to add things that I have not mentioned. I am happy to have your feedback. We need to create a better life for all women on this planet. If you don’t know much about feminism and would like more information, I suggest reading, Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Gloria Steinem. Revolution from Within, Robin Morgan, The Burning Times. I also suggest Lenore Walker and Alice Walker, Marge Piercy and Toni Morrison.

Alice Walker, author and feminist

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Still I Rise


Holden Beach, NC Photo by Barbara Mattio

Women are not born feminists. Some are born tom boys, some are girly, some are born strongly principled. Some girls have a deep spiritual longing.

So then, what makes a feminist? Life creates feminists. Lovers bring joy, happiness and relationship to life. Some of them not only break hearts, they break our trust. Some of them break an arm or a rib or perhaps,”just” tell us we are nothing.

Women grow up and most go to college and some find that some professors don’t like women students. Some women have to be subjected to sexual harassment . Some women are bullied because they aren’t pretty enough or they are smarter than many of the males in class.

Women sometimes get all dolled up and go out with the girls. Some men think this means they are prey and stalk until they can go in for the kill.

All women realize that today we make $.77 for every dollar a man makes. For the same work. In addition, some must work in a hostile workplace.

I became a feminist because of some of the above scenarios and because I read a lot of history. I became aware that women have always been treated as possessions. Women have “needed” to be owned and controlled. I began reading about the European witch trials and found out that millions of women and children were horribly murdered because their knowledge of herbs and knowing which ones to use for healing made them different. This was a very serious matter if the was no man around to keep her in check. You could be in trouble for being good with animals. Today, we call that being a dog whisperer. or a horse whisperer. It used to mean you were a witch.

When I wanted to have a tubal ligation to prevent further pregnancy I had to bring a paper home from the doctor. This was 1972. My husband had to sign it for me to have the surgery. It was my own body. It belonged to me. But society didn’t see it that way, it belonged to him.

Have you ever gone shopping and hid what you purchased in the trunk? Did then later on sneak it into the house and your closet? That is the sneakiness that develops when we don’t have our own money and are not allowed to make our own choices.

We have gotten past the part where women are not encouraged to go to college unless it was to find a husband. Many women today have advanced degrees and still make less than a man or the same work and same degree. Women continue to be the minority in math and the sciences yet millions are capable to earning degrees in math and science.

Young women today don’t understand that they are entitled to be an equal partner in their relationships. They have the right to make their own money, to practice contraception and to have sex only when they want it. They don’t have to cooperate with their partner unless they wish to.

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But, still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.
I rise.
I rise.

——Maya Angelou

I dedicate this blog to all of the oppressed peoples in the world. I especially dedicate it to those who have died due to hatred and violence. We won’t give up or go back!

Holden Beach, NC Photo by Barbara Mattio

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We Are Not Equal


 

Next year, 2013, women have another chance to be legally equal.  The Equal Rights Amendment will be before Congress once again. Frankly, I realize that men and many women don’t understand why this is an important piece of legislation. Congress, a majority of rich, white males will decide whether women and girls will receive equal treatment under the US Constitution. They will also decide  whether to ban sexual discrimination.  Next year is huge for the female gender.

This is not a new proposal. We worked very hard to obtain ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, We lobbied, marched and picketed in state capitals and Washington DC. We talked and explained and worked and yet the predominately male white Congress would not ratify this amendment.  We are now 12 years into the twenty-first century and we, women and girls, are not legally equal in the United States of America. This is an outrage and can’t be justified although many have tried.

Fifteen states refused to ratify this amendment in 1972. They resist efforts to change this unfair discrimination. Most of the states that did not vote to ratify the ERA, equal rights amendment, are Southern states. The female gender makes up 51% of the population of America. We are the country which is at the forefront of human rights and the majority of our citizens are not legally equal.

Our media reports about how women and girls suffer in other countries and we tell countries that they must not discriminate due to gender. We send money and officials to educate other countries and to better the status and lives of the country’s women and girls. Yet, here at home in the United States of America, women and girls continue to be discriminated against due to their sex and they continue to be the only citizens of the USA that are not legally equal under the Constitution. We are coming up to another opportunity to rectify this for the women and girls in our own country. The twenty-first century, and specifically 2013 is the year to right this wrong. Get involved. Write or email your congress people and tell them this is important to you. Find out what is happening with the ERA movement in your state.

Give us equality for all people in this world. Give us equality for women and girls in America!

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A Garden of Her Own


Photography by Barbara Mattio

I confess the title is a twist on Virginia Woolf’s A Room of Her Own. However, times have changed a lot since the days when Woolf was writing. In Woolf’s time, there was still the concept of a woman having a room where she took care of no one else and could peruse the few things in life considered appropriate for young ladies and women.  It as also a world where we were wearing corsets and breathing was a skill and swooning was the inability of the lungs to acquire the proper amount of oxygen. This also made physical exercise beyond a sedate walk quite an impossibility. So times have changed and we have changed.

The media has, of course, changed much of what happened in the 1970’s. A time came when we, who were feminists were called FemiNazis because we were expected to line up and get in our places. Being a feminist became something that some no longer wanted to admit. We had made a difference, so it was no big deal. Many people spoke up that we can accomplish everything we needed as women.

It is now the twenty-first century.  With the signing of President Obama’s equal pay law, women now will make $0.77 for every dollar a man makes for equal work. In the 1970”’s, we made $0.67 for every dollar a man made.

We worked to give women choices in the 1970’s. Many women stayed home with the children then. Many thought they were slowly losing their minds. A book called The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan came out and changed the prospects of American women. It was, for me an” aha! ” moment. Women were capable and many wanted choices. To stay home with your children, to go into the workplace, or to do both. Over the years, big business has made it almost an impossibility not to have two family incomes. So we don’t really now have the choices we worked for.

The grassroots movement against Domestic Violence began in the 1970’s and many women were able to seek legal recourse, to receive counseling, have a support system that let her start again where she and her children would be safe. We used educational programs and training for educating local police departments on how to safely answer a Domestic Violence call. Historically, more officers are injured answering a Domestic call that any other type of call.
In the twenty-first century, Domestic Violence is on the rise. FBI stats document this fact. Young women don’t understand Domestic Violence and don’t realize that when they are pushed, shoved, kicked, slapped, humiliated or even called demeaning names they are victims of Domestic Violence.

We are once again fighting for the ability to control our own bodies. They are after all, ours. We and our bodies have become a pawn in national politics and this fact is so distressing. Congress wants to be able to tell us when we can go to a doctor and when we can have procedures. They even want to be able to tell us when to have procedures.

So, we all need a room or a garden of our own. I think of my daughters and I know that they are not wearing corsets but between the demands of running a home, having a career (for those who have chosen this path), and children and husbands, they need some space for themselves. I believe that we all need the room and a garden of one’s own can be a fragrant, colorful, non-political place to breathe, be true to yourself, make decisions, and give hurried, pressured lives a time of rest and relaxation. I encourage you to try it. It also is a soothing balm for the soul.

Photography by Barbara MattioPhotography by Barbara Mattio